I flung along the strand, and my dark shadow flung after me, and when I
stooped down to the water to find a bottom, the spectre of a fire-red
form gazed at me from the black abyss, and in the distorted lineaments
of its face, and in its dishevelled hair, which seemed as though it
were lifted up upon the head by some terrific force, I failed to
recognize myself.
“Ah! what is it? O Lord!” I prayed with outstretched hands.
But the tocsin kept calling. The bell no longer entreated, it shouted
like a human being, and groaned and choked. The strokes had lost their
regularity, and piled themselves one on the top of the other, rapidly
and without echo; they died down, were reproduced and again died down.
Once more I bent down to the water, and alongside of my own reflection
I perceived another fiery spectre, tall and erect, and to my horror
just like a human being.
“What’s that?” I screamed, looking round. Close to my shoulder stood a
man looking at the conflagration in silence. His face was pale, his
cheeks were covered with still moist blood, which gleamed as it
reflected the fire. He was dressed simply, like a peasant. Possibly he
had been already here when I ran up, and had been stopped like myself
by the swamp, or possibly he may have arrived after me; but at all
events I had not heard his approach, nor did I know who he was.
“It burns,” said he, without removing his eyes from the fire. The
reflected fire leapt in them, and they seemed large and glassy.
“Who are you? Where do you come from?” I asked; “you are all bloody.”
With long, thin fingers he touched my cheeks, looked at them, and again
fixed his gaze upon the fire.
“It burns,” he repeated, without paying any attention to me.
“Everything is burning.”
“Do you know how to get there?” I asked, drawing back. I guessed that
this was one of the many maniacs, which this ill-omened summer had
produced.
“It burns!” he replied; “ho! ho! don’t it burn!” he cried, laughing,
and looked at me kindly, wagging his head. The hurried strokes of the
tocsin suddenly stopped, and the flame crackled louder. It moved like a
living thing, and with long arms, as though weary, dragged itself to
the silent belfry, which now seemed near and tall, and clothed no
longer in pink but in red. Above the dark loop-hole, where the bells
were hung, there appeared a timid quiet tongue of fire, like the flame
of a candle, and was reflected in pale rays on their metal surface.
Once more the bell began to tremble, sending forth its last
madly-despairing cries, and once more I flung myself along the shore,
and my black shadow flung after me.
“I’m coming, I’m coming!” I cried, as though in reply to some one
calling me. But the tall man was quietly seated behind me, embracing
his knees, and kept singing a loud secondo to the bell: “Boom! boom!
boom!”
“Are you mad?” I shouted to him. But he only sang the louder and the
merrier, “Boom! boom! boom!”
“Be quiet!” I entreated. But he smiled and sang on, wagging his head,
and the fire flared up in his glassy eyes. He was more terrible than
the fire, this maniac, and I turned round and took to flight along the
shore. But I had scarcely gone a few steps, when his lanky figure
appeared silently alongside of me, his shirt fluttering in the wind. He
ran in silence, even as I did, with long untiring strides, and in
silence our black shadows ran along the upturned field.
The bell was suffocating in its last death-struggle and cried out like
a human being who, despairing of assistance, has lost all hope. And we
ran on in silence aimlessly into the darkness, and close to us our
black shadows leapt mockingly.